


Beyond The Wall

by TheArticulatedSpace



Category: Carmilla (Web Series), Carmilla - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-02-23 11:24:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13189056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheArticulatedSpace/pseuds/TheArticulatedSpace
Summary: “…American?” The old man at the ticket booth says slowly, butting out his cigarette into an overflowing ashtray. He rose his bushy grey eyebrows until they disappeared into his hair. “Very brave. Not many foreigners here.”In an alternate universe where the Bohemian kingdoms never fell, optimistic journalist Laura Hollis volunteers for a once in a lifetime chance. A chance to travel into the heart of the United Bohemian Kingdoms, the Walled Country, a place the modern world has never visited— a place the modern world has never wanted to go. She’s headed for Karlstejn Castle, ancient home of Bohemian kings and current residence of interviewee-to-be, High-Queen Lilita, and her menagerie of children. But everywhere Laura goes, there are... rumours. Supernatural rumours. Bleeding necks, skulls nailed to trees, a mysterious owl-eyed monster, circles of green stone and salt. Then Laura meets the queen’s daughter, Carmilla Karnstein. There are… worse rumours about her.





	1. Prologue

——————————————————— 

LAURA’S LEGENDS- A BLOG FOR STORIES FROM THE UNITED BOHEMIAN KINGDOMS

Posted at 2:17 pm, 17/12/2018 by Administrator/Owner L_Hollis

Edited 47 times. Last edited at 11:38 pm, 17/12/18 by Administrator/Owner L_Hollis

Viewed 0 times. 

——————————————————— 

My dear Readers,

Not that there are many of you… 

I mean, not that there are any of you. There aren’t any of you. I’m still talking to myself here. Alone. Just me in little Laura-echo-chamber sitting here and twiddling my thumbs waiting to be discovered. My blog traffic is solely populated by my own narcissistic view-checking and only-obvious-after-posting grammar-editing. But of course, all of this is irrelevant. Of course it is.

I have a story to tell, even if nobody is listening. 

This… this is the kind of story that kills people. Telling this could still get me killed. Reading this could get you killed. People get killed in it. I nearly got killed so many times that I stopped counting somewhere between my coach getting de-roaded by an owl-eyed monster and the Great Homicidal Cheese Wheel Disaster (Long story). But it needs to be told. After hundreds of years in silence, these people need a voice. 

I need a voice. 

So many things have happened. 

I don’t even know where to start. 

———————————————————


	2. Chapter One: Laura Alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably about to submit 50 million edits but hey, Chapter one is here. Will keep y'all posted.
> 
> Peace x
> 
> Edit: Just posted, already found something to edit. I am a failure.
> 
> Edit 2: Made some changes to the ending bit because I wrote that running on 0 sleep on a plane. I think it's slightly improved :)

Four Months Ago

 

It was the morning of the phone call.

 

_Bump_

“Um, excuse me… _you_. _”_ I squinted at the doors. _“_ But I don’t think we sell what you’re looking for.”

The person in the long hooded robe (Which honestly looked like the garb out of Lord of the Rings or… or something of that nature) disregarded me entirely, and smushed their body against the glass door of the petrol station again.

It was 3 am, and it was dark, moonless and cold. I was alone.

I mean, I get it—duh, people get hungry or thirsty and totally not axe-killing-murderous at 3 am for one reason or another and your handy-dandy local gas station is always mercifully open but the doors are locked at 12 am on the dot every day, always have been-- employee protection in the Land of the Free and all that fun stuff. Once the clock ticks into the early hours, we lock ourselves behind bulletproof glass (God bless America, amiright?) and sit tight until we’re relieved at five the next morning.

There was the little window I could pass energy drinks and smokes and change through but our friend the Nazgul-gone-rogue wasn’t anywhere near there. They were just standing at the _very_ locked doors, bumping their face softly into the glass. It must have been at least the last ten minutes. Over, and over, and over, and over.

I hadn’t even seen the person coming. No car pulled up to the pumps, no footsteps from down the street; just one minute not there, and the next minute, there, like they’d been bumping the door since time began. It was so stupid, but something about them just put me off. Something more than the weird bumping.

Something about that person made my skin crawl.

What in the name of fiddlesticks and _fudge_.

Standing up from my creaky swivel chair, I shuffle to the window and open it a crack. The chilly November air hits my face like a punch, and I manage to yell “Hey, we’re closed, but we have chips over here!” at the possibly unhinged person ominously thudding themselves into glass.

It’s better if they want chips more than they want to murder me, right?

 _Bump_.

My heart sank a little in my chest. They had to have heard, right? There was no way they couldn’t have—it was silent outside. I snapped the window shut and backed into the cigarette cabinets, away from the window and the counter. It was as far away I could legally get from my new bestie without technically leaving my job. And I _really_ needed this job.

 _Bump_.

I can’t see under their hood.

That’s a dumb thing to get so hung up on, but I _cannot_ see a single part of the person’s face, not even a nose. I didn’t think it was possible for a piece of cloth to cast a shadow so deep. It’s… it’s like a black hole whirling atop a human body— like the person doesn’t even have a face at all.

A shiver runs up my spine. The skin crawling intensifies.

“God, Hollis.” I whisper to myself, running my fingers along the cigarette cabinets behind me like I might feel the concrete walls of a prison cell. “You’re gonna scare yourself to death thinking like that. They’re… they’re probably just an addict.”

 _Bump_.

“Hopefully.”

Mostly to distract myself, I glance at the counter, where two things call to me.

First, my phone, in which lies the outside world: Kirsch, the guy on the next shift and also my only tolerable coworker—willing to drop anything to help his bros, and of course, hotties-- (I still didn’t know which camp I belong to, and have no desire to find out) and the police.

And second, my blog—open on the desktop monitor where I was pretending to be restocking not twenty minutes ago. ‘LAURA’S LEGENDS’ the heading text reads, ‘A BLOG FOR STORIES FROM THE UNITED BOHEMIAN KINGDOMS.’ Even reading the name forces a little of the panic from me. If only I could just sit down—just sit down and calmly finish my post on one of my favourite paranormal legends from the kingdom, the bubak.

“No, Dad! Not _boob-back!”_ I remember trying to explain to my dad on the way to school when I was about nine-- living in Minnesota, taking my book of Bohemian Mythology with me every step my size two feet walked. “It’s like a bone scarecrow,” I told him from the back seat, with more than a little passion in my pre-pubescent screech of a voice. “It sits out in fields and cries like a _real_ - _life_ baby to trap people into coming to look, and then-“ I paused for dramatic effect. “- It tears you to _bits_!” I yelled, snapping the book shut at the same time, collapsing into the kind of giggles only a nine-year-old girl can make. 

“Do you think that book might be a little scary for you, Loz?” Dad asked with an edge of concern. “You’ve been obsessed with it since the book-fair last month.”

I shrugged, but held the book tight against my chest. Dad had a habit of taking anything possibly dangerous and locking it away—never to be seen again. “Scary things are out there.” I said with conviction, looking Dad in the eye via the rear-view mirror. “I gotta prepare for them when I go to Bohemia.”

“You got it, kiddo.” Dad said, eyes flicking back to the road. 

Of course he didn’t tell me I’d never be able to go.

Of course he wouldn’t tell me that after the wall was finished around the entire country in 1822, the borders had closed for good—that after the Second World War, the United Bohemian Kingdoms hadn’t spoken a word to the outside world. He wouldn’t have told me that there were approximately two books published on the mystery of why. Of course he didn’t tell me then that it was a country locked inside out—nobody comes out, nobody goes in. Of course he didn’t tell his fanatical, bubbling little girl that. He never could.

Because to that little girl, The Walled Country was a medieval paradise— a place beyond our world’s rules. I just _knew_ there were fantastical things hiding in every corner of the woods, and magic dwelling in the hands of wizards living in high towers, and monsters in caves and huge long dragons in the deep lakes. I consumed everything I could ever get my hands on about the place. I even taught myself to speak Czech when I was fourteen so that I could speak it when I eventually got to go there.

I was obsessed—which in retrospect is probably why I had a rough number of zero friends growing up.

Even when I got older and expected the great Truth of Adulthood to allow me more insight into the United Bohemian Kingdoms, it wasn’t there. I’d read and seen and watched everything there was about it. Nobody really seemed comfortable talking about it for too long, because nobody ever talked about it.

The grand truth I was always expecting turned out to be: we didn’t know anything for sure.

Hence, the need for me.

I kept a blog of _everything_ I ever found out. Two years ago, when I was fresh out of college and still positive I could get a job as a journalist in fake-news era I’d gone published a whole-ass book, my name on the front and everything. As far as I know I only ever sold one copy. I don’t even know where to.

The bubak blog entry was the last of the ‘Mythical (or _are_ they) Creatures’ series. After it stopped worrying him— the bubak was Dad’s favourite myth.

I’d been postponing it ever since he died last year. 

 _Bump_.  

“Oh.” I said aloud into the pre-dawn air, like I wasn’t terrified all over again. I rubbed down the sudden goose bumps on my arms. “I almost forgot about you.” The person didn’t respond, predictably, and bumped their face into the glass again. Over, and over, and over and over again.

It was 3:10 am, and it was moonless and cold. I was alone.

And that was when I decided I needed to act.

Unlocking the door to behind the counter, heavy flashlight in hand like a club, I took one tentative step into the open space of the shop—surrounded by chip packets and soda and cookies and that weird little condom stand that just said ‘WRAP’ in huge ominous letters. No other advertising.

I don’t even know where we order those from…

 But the person was still there, still bumping, still cloaked and faceless. And the show must go on. So on we go.

 _Bump_.

“Hey!” I yelled from the other side of the glass, fear in my voice making it squeaky-high, like I wasn’t a grown-ass adult with a full-time job, and more just a jerk with a big glowy stick. Shining the flashlight through the door and onto the person, I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hey, you in the cloak!”

 _Bump._  

And here’s the weird thing. Here’s where I stopped still.

The flashlight was on-- that much I knew. It was bouncing off the door and back into my eyes-- I knew that too. And I could see the light on the pumps, glittering and twisting on the smooth metal and gentle sheen of petrol on the asphalt—that was normal. But no light shone on the cloaked figure. None at all. It was like the light went straight through them.

No, that wasn’t right.

 _Bump_.

It was like the light was scared of touching them.

Here, standing so close to them, I only now began to notice how off the person looked. The way they carried themself was just… wrong. I-I couldn’t describe it properly if I tried, but its balance was so off, like… like their spine was crooked, in a way that probably hurt to be alive, let alone stand.

But the worst part—the absolute worst part-- the person… they moved flat. Completely flat. Not like two-dimensional flat; flat like the absence of feeling-- not in a way that was good or evil, like the way a mechanical fault in a fire extinguisher isn’t good or evil. The way it just is-- fatal as it might prove. Back and forth-- a shuffle of the dragging feet. _Bump_. A shuffling retreat. Again, again, again.

And like most times when you’re too petrified and close to wetting your pants to do anything else, I spoke.

“Hey!” I yelled, louder this time, trying to ignore the rising urge to run, just run and never come back. “ _Hey_ , you in the cloak! This place is closed! If you keep u-up that bumping, it’ll damage something a-and-…” I broke off. 

Holy Hufflepuff, the person in the cloak had stopped—not just stopped the bumping but halted their movement entirely, like someone pushed a real-life pause-button mid-way through their flat, hollow motion.

“S-so, you clear off! Clear off or I’ll call the cops!” I finished lamely, feeling all at once very exposed, bulletproof glass be damned.

The figure lifted their head. For a single millisecond I saw two huge yellow owl eyes under the hood, not glinting in my flashlight but glowing on their own, like a… What’s a fire but more impersonal?

I saw nothing but eyes. I didn’t know if there was anything but eyes. I didn’t get the chance to find out.

They were gone.

I screamed.

They were _gone_. They vanished. They _vanished_ into thin air like a- like a ghost. God, the long robe, the bumping, the possibility of facelessness—all these things suddenly felt _normal_ in the totality of just _me_ , standing _here_ in the place the person had been, and- and…

A wave of absolute shock washed through my body, and my legs jellied out from underneath me. My flashlight clattered to the ground and I followed soon after, just sinking to my knees on the rubber mat in front of the glass doors and staring into the sticky tar of night.

Whatever that had been, it wasn’t human.

I sat there for what felt like years. But when I stood up, moved back behind the counter and locked the banister (not that it made me feel any safer, mind you) only ten minutes had passed. The little clock on my phone just read 3:20, like nothing strange had ever happened. 

Nothing felt real.

That should shock me, but now-- now I can’t even muster the effort to react. I’m full to the brim with panic and shock and… and absolute disbelief. None of it felt like it actually happened. I didn't watch that happen. Someone else did. Like I was viewing the memories of someone other than Laura Hollis. For once, metaphorically speaking, there was no room for dessert. Not even cake. There was no room for anything at all.

Sitting back into my swivel chair felt like sitting into an interrogation. If I wasn’t a sensible human being who totally didn’t just watch a person vanish on the spot in plain sight, I would have thought something was watching me... Which is just another way of saying something is definitely watching me.

Thinking about waiting for Kirsch from 3:20 to 5:00 am-- waiting for another human being to arrive for two hours, felt like an incomprehensibly unachievable thing.

So I didn’t think about it.

I didn’t think about it at all. I just sat. The same sitting I was doing in front of the door, only with more prickling fear and eyes on my neck. I just sat. I just continued to sit, feeling my skin crawl like the walls had eyes and ears—like the walls were eating up everything I did with all their invisible senses. I sat like any moment I could be attacked from behind by a flat-moving, owl-eyed monster.

Kirsch had to slap me before I noticed he was there.

“Dude.” He said, tapping my face. “Laura, dude.” He said again, tapping harder. I blinked.

And I blinked again, this time letting everything come back into focus. I shook my head like a dog, and blinked for a third time. Kirsch was standing over me, in the space behind the counter. He was holding a McDonald’s smoothie and a disgustingly sweaty-smelling workout towel. The back door was open, and fresh sunlight was pouring through. It was 5:05 am.

“Wh-what?” I mumbled, finding out exactly how to use my voice again.

Kirsch’s tense young face comes into view as he swivels my chair around to face him. “Laura, dude, you were like, just sitting there, staring into space or whatever. How long have you been sitting here?”

There was an urge in that moment to say words that would make Kirsch think I was an actual loon. God, there was the urge right there to tell him everything. ' _Two hours ago I saw something that you only see in weird indie horror films. I don't even know if it was real or not. I promise I'm sane. Promise.'_

“No… no, I was just… I was just resting.” I say instead, not really answering his question and mostly sounding kind of like how I imagine Professor Trelawney from Harry Potter might talk when she smoked pot with Professor Sprout on their days off. 

Like he always did when things seemed off, Kirsch frowned in that gentle-giant dude-bro kinda way and pushed a smoothie in the shitty McDonald’s cup into my hand. “You take this.” The top of the straw was already chewed and spitty beyond recognition, but the cup was still 90% full, and I accepted it, because I knew it would make us both feel better. “I think you probably need it more than me, dude.” He said, patting the lid.

“Hey, thanks.” I said, finding it hard to really meet his eyes, not for lack of graciousness. I smile at the ground instead, but Kirsch smiles back like the big goof he is.

The need to be alone again rose in me like a sweeping tsunami and I stood up a little too quickly, a slurp of smoothie sloshed out of the cup and onto the linoleum floor. God, what was _wrong_ with me?! “I’m gonna go, if that’s okay.” I chanted. 

Kirsch shrugged, took my swivel chair and sat down in front of the counter. I suddenly felt awful for leaving him here, like I was sacrificing him to the owl-eyed monster so I could make my escape. Here I was, clutching his smoothie, taking his kindness and giving him up to my new friend the teleporting weirdo. That's.. that's a ridiculous thing to think, right? 

Is it ridiculous to worry over something that might not even exist? 

Kirsch didn’t say anything else, so I grabbed my phone and closed my blog off the monitor, McDonald’s cup still clutched in hand.

“Bye, Kirsch.” I said. _I'm sorry if you die,_ I added, but silently. _Even though you might not die and I might just be exhibiting pre-schizophrenic symptoms, and should see a psychiatrist._

“Later, Laura-gator.” Kirsch said, already deep into some online game as per usual.

I ducked out of the back door and into the sunlight. My shitty-ass car was exactly how I left it. My keys were in my pocket, just where I left them last. The gross water bottle and the multitudes of cookie crumbs were exactly as I remembered. I turned on my car and waited for the heating to kick in. I hummed along to the cracking radio, and when I was satisfied with the temperature, I pulled out onto the highway.

And for a moment, I could pretend nothing had happened at all.


	3. Chapter Two: The Warning

When you think of home, most people think of, y’know, a place.

Like, maybe it’s a worn-in, slightly rundown house in the suburbs with all the hallmarks of somewhere well-lived and well-loved. A place where there’s tire tracks in the gravel and a car you only wash every three months because you don’t have the time, and the smell of home-cooking, and new sponges, and laundry detergent.                                  

I know, I know, generalization of people’s diverse childhoods and all that, but the point is: when I think of home, actual home, I draw a blank. I don’t see a place.

You could delve deep into the darkest recesses of my brain, and only in the most rural, most obscure part of the mind would you a fleeting glimpse of the concept, sitting right next to the registry of middle school crushes and the two hundred thousand bobby pins that I’ve lost in my hair-- the smallest hint of home. Not in my childhood house in Minnesota with Dad—that was where Mum abandoned us; and not in my college apartment, where I cohabited with five law students and a philosophy major (The _yelling_ … oh God, all the pretentious yelling…), and certainly not here. None of these places were home.

The only time I’ve ever felt at home was far, far away from the places I lived.

“Home?” I can sometimes imagine saying incredulously to my hoard of grandchildren and great grandchild (I don’t plan on dying until my knowledge of Harry Potter trivia is considered scholarly expertise on classical literature) “Why, I think I’ve only felt that once in my whole long life!” I’d break here, and ruffle a kid’s hair, and cough, “Well, let me tell you, I was just a little girl—spring-boned and scabby kneed and I was walking through a forest not to far into Yellowstone, and my father and I were there to look for wolves. Yes, wolves! They’d just been released back into the park, you see, and since werecreatures were mentioned in my most _favourite_ book, I decided I just had to see one in real life.” I’d pause again, old face crinkling in distant amusement. “And we trekked around for days, and days, and days, until my father did something I didn’t think he’d ever do.”

“What was it?!” The cabal of children would cry.

“He put us both in danger and went off the path. Old Mr. Hollis, my father, went deep into the woods with his little girl and only a little half an hour later we’d found them. The wolves were trudging along a ridge not a hundred yards away. And my father grabbed me by the shoulders, and told me about all the ways they took care of each other in the pack, how it was one big clan wielding nature’s most fearsome defence system: family. And I felt in that moment, I didn’t belong anywhere else. Like all the books open in my head had snapped shut, and it was okay to be alive. It had always been okay to just _be_.”

But the feeling faded. It faded years ago, just like the hopeful illusion of me and my grandchildren, and there I was: just me sitting in my shitty car, driving home at 5 am, purple moons stamped under my eyes, and a little leftover fear microwaving in my jittery fingers.

A vision of 3 am monsters flitters around my head, but I hide it from the front of my thoughts as best as I can.

It was 6:17 am. And I was sitting in the sporadic heating of my shitty car, driving down the highway right into the bad area of New York suburbia. The sign for my exit rose to meet me, and I switched lanes. There was a weird smell in the air, but I ignored it. Winter is full of weird preserved smells lying under the ice. Speaking of snow, there's actually... none of it. There's frost on the grass and the trees and everything is dead, and yellowed and cold, but there's no snow. It should have snowed six times by now but the sky just won't give in. Everyone I talk to seems to think the world is holding all its snow above us, ready to dump it down like a neck-breaking blanket. 

 _'This one isn't like the other ones,'_  those weirdo doomsayers tell us all, roaming the streets, ringing bells and hollering off-kilter and maddened.  _'This one is set to end us.'_

Gives me the creeps...

Tightening my hands around the steering wheel, I shoulder-check and veer out into my exit, making a sharp left, a sharp right and a wide sweep into a street I can only describe as the feeling of having wet socks built into concrete. My street.

I’ve always been fairly optimistic, but Birkenstock Close just beats all the sunshine right out of you: constantly dark due to cloistering, ever growing stacks of box apartments (One of which is my home sweet mildewed home) and so, so quiet.

We have a fair few spats down on the street, and when something is about to go down, birds or dogs or insects or rats or whatever, they’re the first ones to sense it. And without animals, it’s completely still. Even the drone of the highway just over the retaining wall feels duller, more subdued; silent like a horror movie is silent right before someone dies.

Regardless, nobody _wants_ to live here. Birkenstock Close is home to this city’s highest concentration of ex-cons (Go us!), and it’s right on the highway—not exactly prime real estate, especially for a young, short and vulnerable woman—but it was cheap and the landlords will accept anything and anyone. And without any non-gas-station work around for little old me, I’ve resigned to the very real possibility that if I’m carjacked and murdered on the way home, I won’t have to work another graveyard shift ever again.

When I pulled into the car park-- overgrown with weeds and dusty, undisturbed trash-- it was quiet.

And that should have been my first warning.

I paused. I swear to God that I paused for a moment and felt the stillness in the air. I swear to God I smelled something hot and heavy again-- that same weird smell-- like fur matted with sweat; like dead birds baking on the sidewalk on a 110 degree day. I swear to you, I swear I knew it. I knew something was waiting for me that day, and I knew it was more dangerous than anything I could ever handle. I knew. And if I knew that I knew, I would have jetted out of there without looking back. 

It was 6:22 am. I was leaning up against my car in the slowly gathering chill only an empty, ignored place can gather. White frost licked the dead grass boxing me and my shitty car into this tiny, weed infested carpark. It was 6:22 am. It was cold, and dark and I was alone. Nobody else in sight. Nobody getting into their cars, or high out of their minds yelling about aliens, no birds, no dogs. Just me, and the smell of sweaty fur, and dead feathers, and the cold. 

I ignored all these warnings, picked up my smoothie and my keys and my phone and climbed the stairs anyway. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, this one is a short one. I wanted to jot down some good characterisation and world building before things got too weird. Back to procrastinating! Also I'm a drama queen and I love cliffhangers. 
> 
> Hope you people are all having a good day <3
> 
> Peace x


	4. Chapter Three: A Gasping Fish

Of course I went up the stairs. Of course I did. Of course I was thinking about my stupid bubak blog post. Of course I sipped my smoothie and jangled my keys on the way to the seventh floor. Of course I didn’t notice that nobody was passing me on the stairs, even though it was early-morning-awkward-eye-contact-avoidance rush hour. I made it all the way to my shitty two-room apartment without thinking anything was even slightly amiss.

Of course I did.                 

So when I jostled open all six of my locks (Dad’s influence) and stumbled inside, the fact that I was no longer alone barely even registered. For a good second at least, anyway.

The woman sitting in the wooden chair at my desk whirled around, put my framed photo of Dad back onto the desk, and smiled wider than I thought was humanly possible. “Hello, lovely.” She said through a mouthful of fangs and a thick foreign accent.

The door slammed shut all by itself, and all six locks clicked.

For the second time that morning, I screamed.

Scrambling back to the door, I shrieked thousands of profane cuss words under my breath like “ _frick”_ and “ _Merlin’s beard.”_ But my only escape was locked tighter than a clamshell.

I was trapped.

“You… y-you—the door-” I stumbled backwards, slamming my back against said door, my chest heaving and heaving and heaving like my lungs were failing. My smoothie slipped out of my grasp and splattered onto the ground, but I couldn’t muster the thought to care. “You’re a… v-v-”

The woman was a head taller than me, lithe and slim, dripping i-in…in like, silver jewellery? Her dark skin glowed with health a-and… and she was smiling like a _predator_. God, she was smiling so wide. Her dress was long, flowing and loose, a foreign pattern embroidered into the fabric. It was Bohemian. I knew just by looking, the pattern was distinctly Bohemian.

What.

The…t-the woman was beautiful—there was no doubt in my little gay heart that she was _gorgeous_ beyond measure—but I knew in a instant, in the way you just _know_ , that she could and would rip my throat out without hesitation.

“Do mind your language, darling.” The woman said, and swept up and out of her chair in a flourish to pull my moth-eaten curtains closed. My curses died in my throat. I swallowed them back into the crypt that had become of my stomach, my movements slow and jarring—far, far too slow.

Of course I was scared.

Dad’s relentlessly drilled survival plans ran through my head like ticker tape, but what could I do but stand? Where in the world can you go to escape a thing that locks don’t apply to?

Once we were plunged into darkness, the woman whirled around again, and grinned wide-- fanged and malicious. Her teeth were so white. A part of me wanted to blurt that aloud and ask what toothpaste she used but most of the rest of me was hollering about _probably_ being this fanged woman’s next meal. “Captain of Karlstejn Guard and daughter of High Queen of Bohemia: Lilita Morgan.” The woman announced, offering her bejeweled hand, the silver glinting a stark contrast on her dark skin. “Matska Bellmonde.” She said after I took her hand.

“I… I um.”

Holy Hell and Hufflepuff.

Did… did she say? No. _No_ , it couldn’t have been. This had to be a joke—it just had to be. It… it was a superfan of my blog come to trick me! She… she had _very_ convincing props and _very_ _special_ special effects and… and there was _absolutely_ no way that the _High-Queen_ of _Bohemia’s_ daughter could be sitting in my apartment. There was _absolutely_ no chance she was bristling with sharp teeth and _very_ nice curves and could… and could lock doors with her mind and-

Oh dear.

I think I’m going to be sick.

“And you are?” Bellmonde asked, still shaking my quivering hand, the little note of severity in her voice overplayed with sticky sweetness. 

 _‘Becoming resolutely sure of my sexuality.’_ I wanted to say, amidst my mind-numbing terror. “Haura Lollis.” I stumbled firmly. “I-I… I mean Laura, I’m Laura Hollis. Yes. That’s me.”

Bellmonde clicked her fangs together; laughing a gnashing, terrifying laugh, somehow still sounding elegant a-and… and- “Why so nervous, Laura dearest?” She asked, taking one stride and somehow ending up leering over my shoulder. I could feel warm breath on the back of my neck. “I won’t bite.” Bellmonde laughed again, and suddenly she was back in front of me, smiling wider still.

But this time, this time Bellmonde was holding a plain cardboard box, perched like a present in her long fingernails. The box was far too big for her to have had it out of my sight.

“Wh-… what?” I said, scraping some remaining vocabulary from the inside of my skull and spitting it out. “What…”

“It’s for you.” Bellmonde said. “Go on, open it,” She purred, like it was the most normal thing in the world to magically break into some random girl’s apartment, scare her half to death with your teeth alone and then immediately offer them a box to open. 

T-talk about obvious traps, am I right?…

I looked around one more time, pretending to be examining the box while I checked for any more escape routes (Dad programming). My two single-pane windows were bolted, that I didn’t doubt. My deadlocks were the best my money could buy, and Bellmonde wouldn’t have skipped them over. The door is locked, probably with mystical vampire magic (Is that a thing?). And unless I can squeeze down the s-bend in the toilet (I’m not _that_ short!) I’m truly and fully trapped. My best bet is to go along with Bellmonde, Daughter of the Queen and Real Life Vampire’s (™) wishes and hope that those wishes don’t involve me being a portable blood bank.

But… but God, The High-Queen’s _daughter_ is a _vampire_. She’s a vampire. An _actual_ vampire.

Is… she _really_ a vampire? Is she really from the United Bohemian Kingdoms? Is she really the Queen’s daughter? God… I have so many questions.

I-I’m going to wake up any second, right? I fell asleep over the counter back at the gas station and Kirsch is trying to shake me awake right now. That’s a real Laura Hollis thing to do: all asleep a million miles away from her hometown and dream her Bohemian dreams true, even if its in kind of a fucked up way. _Any_ second now, I’ll wake up and this will all be over. No hooded owl-things, no hungering royal vampires, no weird smells, and no warning signs.

But even after I’d damn near pinched a hole in my arm, Matska Bellmonde didn’t disappear.

I stumbled over a million and a half questions, but let just one of them leave my tongue. “Why are you… why are you here?”

Bellmonde shrugged. “Mother’s wants are… difficult to puzzle. But I daresay you’ll like what’s in the box. My Queen is gracious in her giv-- Oh!” Bellmonde broke off and stared down at the box. It was ringing. Not like a bell or a chime, but like a… like an old fashioned telephone—deep and clanging and clattering. “It’s for you.” Bellmonde said, again like this was all completely normal.

Of course I opened it. Of course I forgot all about traps and just _opened_ it without checking for springs or bombs or poisonous gas containers or a collection of small, well trained and very deadly snakes. Of course there was a gigantic old telephone in there—all ancient wooden paneling and smooth, polished brass. Of course I picked the whole thing up, feeling the weight of it in my hands, spreading my palm out beneath it to support it properly. There were no cords attached to outlets or walls, the phone just rang freely like the logic defying thing it was. Of course…

The ringing stopped as soon as the receiver clicked out of place. I hefted it to my ear, keeping a close eye on Bellmonde, who was watching me like a hawk might watch an injured rabbit in the middle of the desert.

“Hello?” I asked, feeling the very weight of everything that had happened collapsing down onto my little shoulders. “This is Haura L- I-I mean Laura Hollis.”

“Laura Hollis?” A twangy voice barked as soon as I said my name.

They were speaking in Czech.

Huh, so _that’s_ what the accent is supposed to sound like.

“Eeer… you’re the twenty three year old female, American citizen, studied journalism at NYU, work at a… errr, you work at a… _gas_ station… whatever that is… and you’re currently living at 22/713 Birkenstock Close, New York?”

I stood there like I’d been electrocuted. “You… how did you- I…” Bellmonde nodded slowly, up and down, up and down, still smiling, like that was supposed to be incentive to go on, to spill my whole narrative to yet another stranger who knew where I lived. Bellmonde’s long teeth glittered. That was… much more of an incentive. I swallowed the beginnings of another scream and went on.

I switched from English to Czech as fluidly as I could. “Yes. Yes, that’s me.”

None of this could actually be happening, right? This all had to be some long-winded fever dream.

…Right?

The detached voice made a snorty sort of noise. “I’ll take you right to my Queen.” The voice said. “Now, when she speaks, you remain completely silent. You may address her as Your Majesty or Your Grace, or My Queen, nothing else. And I suggest you… errr… _be_ _polite_. She wanted to deliver her message to you _personally_.”

“…What?!”

I spun on the spot, half-expecting in all this craziness for the High-Queen to appear with a bouquet and do a jig ( _Whaaat_? Traditional dancing is a _very_ popular custom in Bohemia!). But there was no one there. Bellmonde gave me a weird look, but didn’t stop smiling.

“She’ll be with you presently.” The nasally voice snapped, and suddenly I was on hold. The line echoed out a dead ‘ _Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr_.’

I didn’t even know telephones this old could do that.

Bellmonde was still nodding, still holding the cardboard box, still smiling. I shivered, and just tried to focus on waiting for the line to reconnect. Tried to, at least.

Okay, this is going to sound ridiculous, but have you ever seen a fish that’s… that’s like lying on the beach just gasping out for water? And you look at it, and you know in your heart of hearts that it truly doesn’t grasp what’s happening? Like, it knows it can’t breathe, but it can’t reach its mind far enough to fathom more than that? It’s… God, it knows it’s dying but it doesn’t understand why—it truly can’t understand the meaning of it all.

Moral of the story: I’m a gasping fish.

And the worst part was, my story wasn’t even starting.

The hold tone sang out into my empty, cold, monster-filled apartment for what felt like forever. Time has this bad habit of oozing by only when it’s most necessary for it to flurry past. I didn’t smell anything in the air. There were no feathers or sweaty fur. There was just my new friend and I—alone, in the dark and the cold. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

And then by some miracle (Or calamity, with my luck) someone spoke from the receiver, high, clear and calm. She was also speaking in Czech. “Hello?” And I knew immediately, the way you just know, that it was the High-Queen. “To whom am I speaking?”

“Hello.” I said, without a single stutter or anything (Miracles _do_ exist) “This… is Laura Hollis. And I’m here with-” I looked up at Bellmonde, who had resumed her seat at my desk, her booted feet resting on the thin wooden desktop. The cardboard box had disappeared to God knows where. Bellmonde waved. “I’m here with Matska Bellmonde. She… she gave me this phone, Your Grace.”

The High-Queen broke into a loud “Ohh! Laura Hollis! Of course, yes, I had to send Matska to deliver the message.” She sighed, like not being in my drafty box home was a terrible, terrible thing. “I _wish_ I could have made the journey myself, but of course, duty calls.”

Nothing, not even a vague “ _Um_ ” was floating in my brain. I was speechless for a good ten seconds—like someone had shoved cotton-balls where my brains were supposed to be. But as you always do when you have nothing to say, I started to speak: “I’m- I’m grateful for your time, Your Majesty. But… I have to admit, I have no idea why you’re contacting me. I’m-” and it truly was the truth. “I’m nobody.”

“And yet you have such a knowledge of my Bohemia, Ms. Hollis.” The Queen said. Bellmonde nodded, like she was hearing every word. “Someone of your expertise _surely_ can’t be nobody.”

“Your Majesty…” I began, my fingers both clammy and bone dry around the telephone. “Not to be rude or… or prying or anything, b-but how do you know all these things about me? As far as my… knowledge goes, your country doesn’t import or produce any technology past the industrial revolution.”

The Queen laughed, high and a little cold. “Why, I read all about you and your blog and your book and your life in the United States. Now would you believe it, I found a copy of your book the last time I left my country borders. I find different cultures _so_ fascinating, and I think you and I share some common ground there.” High-Queen Lilita laughed again, shorter this time.

Something about that seemed off, and I didn’t say anything for a moment, opening and closing my mouth like the gasping fish I was. And then it hit me. “How… do you know about my blog if you don’t have the Internet in your country?” I asked. “Your Highness.” I added, on an afterthought. 

“I… read about it in your book of course, Ms. Hollis. You did mention it, did you not?”

“Oh, yes!” I mumbled into the receiver, feeling a slight pink rush to my cheeks. “I must have written about it at least once…” In truth, I didn’t remember writing about my blog at all, but come on, was I _really_ going to disrespect the authority of a high-queen? And besides, my memory is about as reliable as Greasy’s Enchiladas down the road from my apartment— which is to say: _it goes in, it comes right back out, possibly in a different colour._

“You’ve read my book, Your Highness?” I asked, feeling foolish but pressing onwards nonetheless. I shifted over to the door, keeping one eye firmly on the vampire at my desk and shoving the telephone under my arm, I grabbed a rag from the sink by the wall. Swiping at the spilt smoothie with the rag, I listened again to the sound of the High-Queen’s voice, which was surprisingly soothing, if a little sharp. 

“Cover to cover.” Queen Lilita said, a little lilt to her voice. “You have a _marvellous_ grasp of your language, Ms. Hollis. I find it very sad that the world knows so little about my country— that you must rely on satellite images and rumours for information— it would be a waste of your _passion_ , we believe, to not provide you with an opportunity to visit.”

My jaw fell open. And at the exact same time, the rag skidded on a patch of smoothie and my face slammed into the floor. The big clattering telephone skidded away with a deep clang.

Bellmonde broke into a fit of gnashing laughter.

“Oh by Gob!” I blurted, unsticking my face from the floor, cold sticky wet dripping from my hair and seeping into my clothes. I swooped up the receiver, thankfully undamaged. Standing on shaky feet, I hefted the old-fashioned phone onto my table. “Oh my God!” I repeated. “A-Are you serious? Your Majesty… I have… I have no words!”

High-Queen Lilita, who was fast becoming my favourite person in the history of forever laughed— high and clear. “It is so good to hear someone so _thrilled_ about coming to my beautiful country. Now, as I understand it, you will most likely be publishing a work on your return?”

“I-uh-“ I stumbled, still too shocked and smoothie-smothered to think. “I mean, er, _yes_ \- yes, Your Highness, I will most definitely be publishing about your country,” I squeezed a bit of smoothie out of my freshly soaked hair. “I-I think the world would love to hear more about the Bohemian Kingdoms.”

“Very good!” Queen Lilita said, like that was the most exciting news ever, and I felt my heart swell stupidly and all too eagerly. “I will assign one of my daughters to you during your stay. Not Matska, someone closer to your age, perhaps— A… cultural exchange so to speak. She’ll oversee your movements, and your research; make sure you experience the _totality_ of my kingdoms. You will be staying a number of months will you not?”

I couldn’t believe my ears. I couldn’t believe my luck. I couldn’t believe… well, _anything_. “Of course, Y-Your Majesty.”

“Your train tickets, plane tickets and visa are with Matska. Since you are living in New York, you should make it to our borders within... two days.”

Dumbledore’s right nipple! The room was _spinning_ beneath my feet. This was actually happening. I was talking to the _High-Queen_ of the United Bohemian Kingdoms. I was going to the Walled Country. Somewhere in the flurry of queen-induced vertigo and silent celebration I realised the High-Queen Lilita was still speaking, and hastily readjusted in my seat to tune in.

“Show the Border Guards your visa, and the train by the Wall will take you straight to Karlstejn, my preferred kingdom of residence.” The Queen finished. “Oh, and Ms. Hollis? 

“Ye-yes, Your Majesty?”

“I’d prefer if your journey towards us wasn’t punctuated by media… interjections.” Queen Lilita said softly, almost apologetically. “We wouldn’t want your journey to be delayed by media attention, now would we? I would do yourself a favour and keep this between us.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, looking around my bare, soulless, friendless apartment. Bellmonde waved again, still stifling giggles at my en-smoothied figure. A healthy blush glowed in my cheeks.

I thought of the long nights I’d spent alone working on my blog in the gas station. I thought of my college days, where my peers would roll their eyes the moment I brought up Bohemia. I thought of my tireless, fruitless job search. I thought of the one copy of my book I’d ever sold. I thought of Kirsch, who was kind and friendly, but never… _got it_ , y’know? And I thought of Dad. Of course I did. My eyes went to the photo of him on the table, the cracked glass repaired with a multitude of Band-Aids, frame reading: _‘Loving, protective father, respected friend— rest in peace.’_

“Don’t worry at all, Your Majesty—I don’t really have anyone to tell.”

 

\--

 

Three million breathless thank you’s later, Queen Lilita hung up on me. Three minutes of screaming into my hands later, the laughing started. Three seconds after the laughing started, I spun ridiculously on the spot, still cackling like a hyena reading uncle-jokes. And three more seconds after the spinning started, I spun just a little too fast and my flight sent me and my joy happily slipping on smoothie once more, cracking my skull into the door.

When I looked up from the ground, Matska Bellmonde, daughter of the High-Queen, was gone. The old telephone, which I could have sworn was on the table before I fell, was gone too.

Vanished.

Just like the owl-eyed monster. Like she’d never been there. 

The floor was still covered in smoothie, and so was I, which was a fairly unconvincing sign that this hadn’t all been a very elaborate acid trip. But all six locks on my door were still locked. I turned on my phone. It was 6:47 AM. It was cold, and dark and I was alone. 

And… and there was a thick, golden envelope on my table where the telephone had been.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it's been a while since I updated. Welp, here's the thing, enjoy!


	5. Chapter Four: An Envelope

It was 6:52 AM.

Now of course, by that time, the shock of everything that had happened was still zapping through my limbs like I was the sole conductor of an orchestra of lighting. The mysterious golden envelope had moved to my desk, where it lay unopened… and I? Well I was still in complete shock.

So I did what any normal person would do in my situation: I sat cross-legged on my kitchen table and locked myself in a _very_ serious argument with a piece of paper.

“I know you don’t want me to go.” I told Dad’s photo. Dad didn’t respond, which wasn’t exactly surprising, given that he was both dead, and a photo. “You still think I can’t keep myself safe.”

Dad stared back—a smiling palette of fatherly colours: blue khaki shorts, bright red fishing rod clutched in pleasantly pink sunburned hands. If you fold out the photo in the frame, I’ll be there too, sitting on the edge of the dock wearing two life vests and an ocean of sunscreen. The summer that photo was taken was the summer I turned nineteen, the summer I first kissed a woman, and the summer I applied to colleges to get my journalism degree after a two-year hiatus… and the summer Dad’s pleasantly pink sunburned skin started to turn red, broiling and blistering.

We were small town folk— the kind of people who walk straight outta the quiet, cold Massachusetts countryside and settle together to huddle from the deafening silence of everything. And you know how things always are in small towns: the news of Dad’s cancer spread almost as quickly as the actual cancer did. And before I knew it, he was gone.

I wasn’t even there to say goodbye.

If you’ve ever lost someone to cancer, you know exactly what I’m talking about when I say the worst part is yes, they’re dying, but the ache of it all is the unknown. The waiting, the bedside vigils with only beeping heart rate monitors and a dying soul for company.

It’s that you know that you’re going to forget to say all the things you want to. It’s the number of things you don’t know are the last times: the last drive, the last words, the last instance of shoveling hospital cafeteria peas into someone’s dry, bloodstained mouth. It’s the hope—God, it’s the failing hope but more, it’s the clusters of doctors and nurses all struggling to find the right words to tell you you are completely and utterly helpless—that after you reach that certain point, all you can do is ease your loved ones into the afterlife and then continue on with yours without them.

However it is you’re supposed to do that. 

Of course, I knew what the doctors had told me—the cancer had ended up addling his mind to point where he didn’t know what was happening. He wouldn’t have known his lasts. He wouldn’t have known where we were going on the last drive. He didn’t remember our last words. But somehow that just made it seem worse.

Dad had died confused, scared and alone in an understaffed hospital surrounded by the sick and dying and blinking, beeping, flashing electronics.

I didn’t see him until three hours _after_ he passed, when my bus pulled in from New York.

“You always looked after me before yourself. You always did, even when it started killing you.” I said firmly to Dad, whose cracked frame was starting to glint as the sun poked from behind the clouds. “And I… I need to do this.”

There was silence.

“You…” I said into it, like I was shouting into the void—my voice small in my smaller room, small as anything ever could be. “You remember when I was first starting high-school, Dad?”

Dad’s photo stared back.

“I mean, I don’t really need to tell you—you were there.”

It was Monday. School was going back, and I was so ready that I’d packed my bags three weeks ago. It was the kind of juvenile excitement you get before that second grade field trip to the local observatory, or the night before Christmas—but it’s fueled by hormones and the wild, strange idea that _this time_ things are going to be different.

But Dad… Dad didn’t think I was ready. That had always been my problem, you know, being ready for things. I’d never experienced the world, he thought, how in _God’s_ name could I survive it? And that was how it happened. He tried his best to walk me out the door and he just… couldn’t. Dad’s legs locked up beneath him and I had to sit him down, my braids bouncing like only schoolgirl braids do as he shook into submission. He coughed, rubbed his pleasantly pink skin, still slightly burned from the weekend’s fishing trip with his best friend Bob, he started talking: “Laura, my girl,” Dad said, “Imagine trying to protect something with no survival instincts from a world full of un-survivable things. That’s what being a parent is. I’m so used to protecting you, bandaging your knees, reading bedtime stories and kissing things better that I _can’t_ go back to the way I was before I knew you. Everything terrifies me so greatly because I know in my heart that I am _not_ _enough_ protect you from the world. Do… do you understand?”

“You think… I’m not smart enough to do it?”

“No, Laura, of course I know you’re smart. You’re a brilliant young woman. You’re strong and brave and persistent, and I _know_ you’ll do great things. But… I don’t want to see you hurt.”

But of course, to my teenage mind, that sounded like: ‘Laura, you are literally the dumbest dip ever to walk this planet and if you don’t stay with me forever, you will _fail_ miserably. Also, I hate you.’ So I did what any responsible girl would do when her parent doubted her ability to function in the adult world: called a cab, abandoned my worried, overprotective father to shake and reminisce on his own and went off to school by myself.

“Okay, so what I did wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done.” I told Dad’s photo, which looked at me all the same, but somehow a little more judgmental. “But the point is, I’m older now. I’ve been on my own since I was eighteen, no safety harness or anything. And this time, I… I really don’t think you can call the police from under our hometown’s cemetery.”

I took a deep, deep breath.

I thought of all these stupid things again. I thought of my job, and how dead the graveyard shift leaves you after all this time. I thought of my degree, slid uselessly into a folder on my desk—the only thing that proved to me I hadn’t just fallen off the face of the earth for four year and fallen back with 50,000 dollars in debt. I thought of Dad. I thought of the owl-eyed monster, and Matska Bellmonde, and the golden envelope sitting untouched on my desk. God, I thought of all of these stupid things.

“There’s nothing… left here for me any more.”

And in the way you just… _know_ , I knew I was telling myself the truth.

I was going to leave everything for this. I’d have to quit my job, move out of my apartment (There was no way I could afford rent without working constantly), leave my life here behind and… and…

And what?

And _what_?

The more I thought about it, the more I just… Like, what more did this dismal city have to give me? What more did I have to give it? How much longer could I exist in my dead-end job and my tiny apartment, nearly friendless and alone before I disappeared completely? How long could I _bear_ it?

But Bohemia… it was… it was my life. It was my _obsession_. It was my passion; writing my book was the one thing that had kept me sane after Dad died. It was the only thing I’d ever truly felt connected to— a tiny girl’s only remaining mystery after she’d figured out all of adulthood’s endless disappointments. It was so stupid to _think_ let alone believe, but this opportunity; it was… my _everything_.

Dad’s picture in its cracked frame watched me pensively from the other end of the table as I baptised myself in the glowing filaments of my ceiling light as it buzzed slowly through my pending power bill.

There was nothing for me here anymore.

“I’m going.” I whispered to Dad, leaning forward to stroke the frame, like maybe if I showed it enough love, Dad could feel me there. A sudden need to bawl punched me in the throat, pricking, stinging tears welling in the corners of my eyes. I picked up Dad, hugged him close to my chest and let the tears run down my cheeks— just let the tears come, even though I had no idea why they were coming. “I’m going. I’m going. I’m going.”

 

\--

 

There was a loud THUMP from upstairs, and a little sawdust cascaded down into my hair like the world’s grossest shower.

I brushed off what I could—even stood up off my wheelie desk chair to really get into it— but the dust that landed in my coat had snatched deep into the cotton. Not leaving any time soon. And yes, wearing a coat indoors is a little weird for all you upper-class luxury-lovers out there, but I (A terribly plain plebian) don’t have a choice—I can’t pay for heating on my salary and also eat enough to stay alive. And hey, get this: when I first started living here, the weird looking ceiling was advertised as ‘industrial flair,’ which is business-landlord speak for: _‘I couldn’t be stuffed paying for insulation, so y’all can freeze during the winter and cook in the summer while sawdust from the exposed wooden beams ruins all your semi-decent clothing. Suck it, give me your money.’_

What I didn’t realise at the time, was that Mr. Concrete-Shoes-Upstairs-Neighbour making noise was a sign that Bellmonde _hadn’t_ actually murdered everyone in my building. Which on the whole seems like a positive thing for everyone, unless said upstairs neighbour decides to mug me for my (lack of) valuables.

I hadn’t bothered to re-open my curtains, for reasons mostly of the ‘I’m obsessing over my envelope’ kind. Besides, a whole decade of reading in the dark after my ritualistic 8:00 PM bedtime meant that it didn’t really matter anyway.

Regardless of sawdust, everything was exactly as the Queen had said. After I’d cleaned up my scene from the movie _‘Smoothie Unhinged: director’s cut—world’s greatest murder mystery,’_ I’d settled down to my desk, and un-tacked the golden wax seal on the envelope. Inside, just like I’d been told, was my tickets and visa, but what was new was a similar coloured invitation, embossed with a spiraling geometric pattern of gold triangles.

GREETINGS, FOREIGNER. The card read in obnoxiously loud capital letters.

IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED THIS CARD, YOU HAVE BEEN ASKED BY THE GOVERNING BODY OF KARLSTEJN TO PROCEED TO ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:

A) THE LAKE NEAREST TO YOUR LOCATION. PROCEED TO JUMP INTO THIS LAKE ONCE YOU HAVE REACHED IT. WE MEAN THIS AS AN INSULT.

B) THE NEAREST ASYLUM. DOCTORS WILL GLADLY USE THE LATEST SCIENTIFIC TECHNOLOGY— LOBOTOMISATION— TO MAKE YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH. WE MEAN THIS AS AN INSULT.

“Errr…” I said aloud to nobody. “…Is this a joke?” I asked, like somehow, someone was going to pop out of thin air and clear up the, frankly, _very_ insulting invitation card I’d received (Which wasn’t exactly out of the question given all the popping in and out of thin air I’d seen in the last eight hours).

Just on a whim, I turned the card over, and there—to my utter relief—was a third option:

C) THE NORTHERN GATE OF THE UNITED BOHEMIAN KINGDOMS, BY FORMAL INVITATION OF HIGH-QUEEN LILITA.

“Oh thank GOD!” I exclaimed, not currently considering the neighbours still sleeping. A proper—if weird—invitation from the Queen; this was clearly leagues better than lobotomisation. And heaven forbid… _swimming_.

There is _nothing_ I loathe more.

The very word ‘lake’ just takes me back to the breezy Massachusetts summer that our second grade P.E. teacher threw us all in the nearest river, Connecticut river, expecting us seven-year-olds—who much like scarecrows have limbs like twigs and straw for brains—to float. Most of us didn’t drown right away, but I sunk like a rock, swept out past my distance and downstream. Of course, someone eventually picked me out of the water—I don’t remember who it was. Probably someone who’d been watching our class out of instinct more than anything else, that much I feel is true.

But, good ol’ teach? She thought I’d been doing just fine.

Dad was furious. I changed schools immediately. He wanted to file a lawsuit against the woman but we just didn’t have the money. The police case closed because none of my classmates would testify against an authority like a school board and our underfunded elementary couldn’t find the Good Samaritan that had saved me. So for all I know, Mrs. Millcot is still out there, still—throwing kids to their deaths.

Now I can hardly go near a body of water without remembering how it felt to sink away from the light; how having it rescind above me like an escaping star was… beautiful almost? Peaceful, maybe?

Terrifying stuff for a seven year old to experience, let me tell you. 

It was only then that I noticed the wet splotches all over my invitation. Tears? But… why are there tears? I wasn’t even…“Crap…” I muttered, and using the corner of my jacket, wiped the embossing clean. “Why am I--” I went to put down the card, maybe go wash my face in the basin, figure out why I couldn’t stop the tears. There was no overwhelming need to sob, the tightness in my chest wasn’t there—just tears flowing from my eyes, too fast and steady to be… I don’t know… hayfever?                                                                                                       

And that was when it happened. 

There was absolutely no way a breeze could make it into my little box apartment, but I was washed suddenly with the smell. _That_ smell. It was that very same smell. Sweat matted fur, like an animal in pain. Feathers—dead birds baking on the sidewalk.

At the same time, _it_ hit me. A wave of sadness hit me so hard I nearly fell out of my wheelie chair. Barely able to see through the waves of tears running down my cheeks, I gripped the edge of my desk, hardly caring that the cheap plastic edging was digging into my palms like knives. It felt like… God, you know that old play they make you read in Grade 9 about the witch-hunts? The one where at the end, they kill this one old man by pressing huge rocks down onto his stomach until he cracks under the weight? The… the feeling was exactly that—weight without end.

I looked up, looked around; the only action I could really accomplish under the pressing sadness—tore my head this way and that for a reason _why_ , and of course, I found it immediately. Of course I did.

Of course I did.

“ _You_ …” I choked through cascades of tears to the hooded figure standing right in front of my locked door. “What do you want?”

7:23 AM. Here I was again: in the cold, in the dark, alone with a monster.

This pattern was starting to get really old.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So updates may slow down from here-on just because school is back and I'm super busy. Thanks for the continued support, tell me what you think and what I can do better. 
> 
> Peace. x


	6. Chapter Five- Little To Be Known

Sometimes there’s no warning. No warning at all.

Occasionally though, there’s a _real_ warning—a true one—one we can’t brush off. Sometimes it starts early, when we’re born in a small town in rural Massachusetts to a mother who runs out on us before we turn two because maybe she _knew_. Maybe she was the smart one—seeing the warning signs; leaving us to the world like she did. Sometimes we have a father who smothers us for the rest of his life out of mostly sheer love, but with some semblance of fear. Fear born of… of like a deep-seated fear that comes from losing the rest of the woman he loved with all his heart. Sometimes other people see the warning signs before we do: when we’re made social outcasts who eat lunch in the bathrooms so nobody looks at us, voted most likely to shoot up a school for two years running during our worst phases, choosing instead to bury our heads in books and other worlds where we might be seen. Sometimes we cry. Yeah… sometimes we cry. And sometimes there are warnings we _do_ see, like a hooded monster at a gas station at 3 AM, or like magical, sexy vampires who offer us our wildest dreams and laugh at us when we fall over our messes. But most of the time we see nothing, do nothing, sit in our pointless jobs holding out for the weekend, or the day off, or the payday, or the afternoon when we can sleep off our loneliness—waiting for another sign, another thing we shouldn’t have seen.

Sometimes there’s a warning for these things. And then other times—well… other times there just isn’t.

The hooded figure looked the same—slumped and standing in a way that was _wrong_ somehow; a sweeping robe right out of a Lord of the Rings novel; the black depths of the inside of the hood just sitting there, like a swirling vortex of nothing drawing my eyes out of my skull. I fought the stupid urge to yell something about the Ring being over with my neighbour with the hairy feet. Hooded figures historically have very little sense of humour. The smell of dead feathers, and sweat-matted fur was overwhelming-- so pungent I could have choked on it.

One key difference in all of this: the monster was blurry through my tears—so many tears, just seeping in droves down my cheeks, soaking my jacket and the shirt underneath.

And then it moved.

God, I just… It just… I-it didn’t so much as walk as shuffle-glide— a rolling, pitching movement, like it was a shambling spirit of itself, like it wasn’t real—but it was, it was real, it was real. And it was coming right for me.

Fear overtook the depression planting chains like ivy in the roots of my bones and I leapt to my feet. Tears sailing from my eyes, I scrambled over creaking floorboards, shrieking out crass curses like ‘ _heck’_ and ‘holy _Hufflepuff’_. My shoulder slammed into the sidewall, and a cracking pain ran down my arm but I didn’t stop, I didn’t stop at all until I’d slid along the length of the wall and come up with my back to the front door. There was a thundering in my ears, and it took me a good five seconds to realise it was my heartbeat. The hooded figure revolved slowly on the spot. If it had feet (Which I was beginning to doubt) they didn’t make a single whisper of sound.

“You stay away from me!” I yelled, hoping against hope that someone would bash down my door, help me fight this monster off. But this was Birkenstock Close—I’m pretty sure someone down the street yelled the same thing on Tuesday over a bowl of fried chicken (Which of course is entirely understandable). But the point is, nobody comes to anyone’s aid here.

The owl-eyed monster didn’t make a sound. Didn’t move, didn’t speak—just watched from somewhere under that hood.

“Please.” I said, my fingers scrabbling desperately at the six locks on my door, though they would be impossible for tiny Laura Hollis (who nearly drowned and/or died in every sporting event in high-school ever) to break. “Tell me why you’re here.”

Sometimes there’s no warning— none at all.

My phone started ringing on the desk, vibrating in a tiny concentric circle—the soft piano ringtone beating a fierce, ironic tattoo into my temples. The figure’s head turned in a terrible flat movement, like the very opposite of emotion; the absence of feeling. Out from beneath the cloak slid a hand— scaly and wet-looking, like some dead, rotting thing. It picked up my phone, and moved again, shambling for me with arm outstretched.

I tried, I swear I tried to stand tall. I swear I tried not to cower, but what else was there to do? Fight back against something that shouldn’t even exist?

But it didn’t hurt me.

I knew it could kill me in a heartbeat. It could kill me to degrees I didn’t know I could be killed. I had my eyes scrunched tight waiting for the blow or the soul-ending pain, the screech of an inhuman thing, but the blow never came. I didn’t die.

My phone just kept ringing.

Opening my eyes nanometre by nanometre, I saw something I never thought would be possible, let alone happening to me: my bestie the monster loomed over me like a cloud of death, and beneath that black, black hood, I could see once more the great owl eyes, glowing like floating orbs in the darkness. It held my phone out, the light from the screen completely negating all of physics and illuminating my face but not its.

“Who are you?” I asked it, soft piano ringtone still singing alone in the background.

I expected something violent, or something anticlimactic. Something like the repetitive dance it performed with the glass door at the gas station, something creepy and mind-bending and... I didn't expect it to speak. 

But it did speak. 

The thing spoke, and when it spoke, it sounded like tears— like I’d walked in on someone sobbing the way people sob when they think they’re alone. It, the thing, it wasn’t crying, but its voice was thick with sadness; years and years and years of sorrow. Maybe millennia.

Maybe more.

“There is little to be known.” Said the thing, like that was an answer. It patted the ringing phone into my hand, the imprint of its scaly, sickly skin ice cold. 

In the depths of January when I was six years old-- all blonde pigtails and fidgets--I got to touch a man that had drunkenly fallen into a snow bank back in early December. Of course, I didn't know he was dead at the time, but I'll never forget the way his hands were solid, like freezer-burned meat waiting on a microwave plate. That was exactly what the monster's hands felt like when they brushed mine. 

And just as I looked down and deciphered the name on the screen through the thicket of tears, the hooded figure was gone again. Like it was never there.

Left with nothing else to do, I answered yet another phone offered unto me by a monster. “Hello?” I said. The tears were suddenly clearing up. Under all the sadness, I remembered that I was alive. I sniffled out of the deep misery much faster than was reasonable to sniffle out of anything that overwhelming.  “Kirsch, aren’t you working?”

The smell of dead birds and sweaty fur was gone, just like the monster, like it was never there. 

“Laura, bro.” Kirsch said, his voice tight and quick, like he was stumbling over himself. He was breathing heavily. “Look, I just saw the footage—Boss only found it fifteen minutes ago-- and the police are all over the station but… but I just gotta know—I just gotta hear it from you myself…”

A sickening feeling settled into my gut. _What_? _What in the name of Merlin's left testicle?!_  “Kirsch… what are you talking about?”

“I watched the tape from last night’s security footage. Look, Boss tripped over the blood where the guy fell, and he had to check the tapes of course, but they can't find the dead guy anywhere, the police... you... I...." Kirsch paused, probably just to catch his breath. "Dude, I don't know what you did with the body after you killed him but-" 

“Kirsh, _what_?!”

Sometimes there’s no warning—no time to prepare, or speak, or shout or change anything—sometimes there’s just absolutely no warning at all.

“I saw the security footage from last night at 3 AM, Laura…” Kirsch paused, like I should know what was coming next. “You killed someone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, thanks for sticking here with me so far. It's taken us a while, but here we are-- the beginning of the action. I think. Cheers for all the support, leave me a note if you see something you like or just wanna say hey. 
> 
> Peace. x


	7. Chapter Six: The Way Things Fold

The sky has broiled itself into a frenzy now, and with a gentle sigh, down comes the consequences in the form of icy, razor-blade snowflakes—the kind that sting children’s cheeks and sit in your clothes like insidious little sauce packets, poised to run down your neck and ruin your day.

Out the window of the cop car, I see a familiar landscape slipping past—the suburban sprawl of New York, it really goes on forever and ever, and ever, and ever. We’ve been driving for so long, I’m starting to think it never ends. I don’t know where they’re taking me, but wherever it is, it’s far away.

Maybe this city doesn’t ever end.

Call me crazy, call me whatever you want: I swear to God I watched the sun go down at least twice.

We drive for mile after mile. The two officers that barged into my apartment only minutes after Kirsch’s phone call sit in the front. One is gruff and red-faced with shoulders wider almost than I am tall (Which isn’t very tall, might I add, so don’t get too scared). He is the angrier one, as far as I can tell. The other one is the same height as me, but she has quick fingers, smart eyes and smooth, dark skin.

In another life, where she isn’t frisking my pockets for weapons, her companion’s gun trained on my skull, I might have told her she’s beautiful—might have considered a little companionship myself. In the life where she didn’t take my golden envelope from my pocket and seal it tight in an evidence bag along with my phone and car keys, maybe I really would have… In another life, if I passed her on the street, maybe I’d do that thing that all lonely people do, and imagine our whole existences suddenly becoming intertwined: imagining enjoying her laughter for the rest of our lives.

In this life, I came quietly.

Something about having overbearing childhood authority makes you smart enough not to ask questions, not to try and defend yourself when faced with police officers carrying weapons strong enough to render you afterlife-bound with a single finger twitch. We’ve all seen the horror stories. Some of us have been in horror stories. So I let myself be cuffed, listened to them when they told me my rights, let the red-faced man shove me into the back of the cruiser. I let it all happen without so much as a word.

Even if I could talk, I just… I just can’t. God, I have so much to say—so much to ask—that I can’t make my tongue move at all.

It isn’t long before I stop questioning everything that’s happening to me. It’s longer before I stop crying.

It’s even longer before I realise that through all this time, I haven’t felt hungry, or thirsty, or anything. It’s like we’re stuck in an endless loop, ever-approaching the towering skyscrapers of New York, but never arriving. Never, ever arriving.

When I’m pulled out of the car, my shoulders straining against the pull of the cuffs in the hands of two uncaring officers, I only see the yawning mouth of the building in front of me. The Metropolitan Correctional Center is the kind of building that looks choleric; a sprawling, red-grey building

When I see the plain analogue clock above the front desk, I nearly scream. I swear I nearly scream. 8:36 AM. Only an hour has passed.

Funny.

I could have sworn it was days.

\--

At the end of a long, white corridor, in a room painted grey and stained with oil and misuse, I learned life’s most eternal truth while unforgivingly chained to a steel desk:

No matter how far you run, you can never escape your goth phase.

Pictures of me from of every high school photo shoot I ever attended stare back at me from a corkboard. My fifteen-year-old self glares at me with animalistic teenage fury, highlighted with a heavy dose of black eyeliner. The room I’m trapped in smells like bleach, and a little bit like fear (Which was amplified not by the fact that I was being goaded into divulging details on a murder I didn’t commit, and more that I had to look at myself at age fifteen and remember that yes, I did in fact think I was ‘soooo different from all morons I have to go to school with XD’).

No wonder I had no friends…  
  
Vince Mahon (His title, whatever it is, is still unknown to me) clucks his overlarge tongue for the millionth time. “So, Ms Hollis, how do feel about telling us now?”

Telling you now? Now as in now after I’ve a whole fifteen hours in a holding cell? I wanted to ask the fleshy, balding man sitting in a wheelie chair in front of me if he meant after I spent those fifteen hours in the holding cell and then another six hours waiting for you and your colleague to get here, only given a cup of water and a slice of bread to sustain me? (The bread was plain, but hey, who doesn’t eat a couple plain pieces of bread on a gas station salary?)

I don’t really have anything to say… so instead I just don’t respond, and continue my silent, scornful staring contest with the Wall of Shame (™).

Mahon sighs and takes another sip of coffee. It has to be cold by now; most hot beverages tend to do that when you stay in a cold, sad room full of pictures of goth teenagers for over three hours.   
  
Mahon gestures with the ‘World’s greatest Cop’ cup to Alice Corina, who I’m assuming is his underling, given the way she scurries around in his shadow. “Rewind the tapes again,” He mumbles, scratching his greying chin.

It’s… and I’m not trying to be rude here, but it’s really hard to tell if he’s falling asleep, or if that’s just his voice. Mahon fixes me with a glare that screams ‘I know you’re guilty as sin.’ “We’ll try one last time.”

Senior Constable Corina nods her shaggy blonde head eagerly and ‘rewinds the tapes,’ which of course means clicking on the little button on the mp.4 on her shiny chrome laptop and dragging it back.

My cuffs clink as I draw my hands anxiously together.

A little blonde woman appears on the screen. She moves with a little hitch in her step towards the front door of the gas station. Outside, a regular looking man in a grey hoodie stands, waving placidly. He is white, and maybe mid-European, with an average build and soft brown hair.

This is not how it happened. That was where the owl-eyed monster was—not waving, not normal-looking, but bumping into the door, wrong and stilted and soul-bendingly creepy. This isn’t how it happened!

The woman in the tapes is me, of course, but I still haven’t grasped the fact that she is me. I want to scream to the officers that this isn’t me, that I have nothing to do with this, but I cannot force my mouth to form words. How do you prove your innocence to people who’re already convinced you’re guilty? How do you explain the hooded figure? How do you explain things that don’t exist in a world purely made of facts and numbers?

I think in that moment—stupidly, uselessly—of that time when I was thirteen, the time some group of teenagers actually decided to let me, the weird girl, into their circle. I proceeded to try for hours to explain why I cared so much about Bohemia to them. Super, super cringy looking back… but… but the point is, I just couldn’t find the words. I-I did everything: showed them my book, my blog, all the notes I took, the years of obsession that had led me to learning a possibly dead language…

Spoiler alert: I wasn’t invited back the next day.

It’s the same feeling. The same breathless, powerless fluster.

The man’s voice is muffled, but he’s pointing to the stand of condoms at the front of the store—the white packaged ones that just say ‘WRAP’ in huge black letters. No other advertising. The woman (me, but not me) in the footage yells something so profane, I squirm in my seat. Mahon shoots me another look, and I fall silent.

“I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you, you hear me?! You make one move and I’ll shoot you into next fucking week!” The woman pulls a handgun, seemingly out of nowhere, and brandishes it like a lunatic; waving it, showing the man the bullets in the cartridge like some kind of murderous sicko.

Grey hoodie guy puts his hands up, starts jabbering and shaking his head, still muffled by the glass.

The woman in the footage grabs her keys and opens the glass doors. She dashes outside.

Something in me wants to leap out and defend myself. I swear in another life I- I swear I would have had the courage. But in this life, gothic fifteen year old Laura watches me, Evanescence probably blasting through her ears as she judges me. And me? Current me? Twenty-three year old possibly murderer me? I just… stand here, watching the way things fold. The little blonde woman who both is and isn’t me pulls a handgun out of her back pocket, and shoots the man at point blank range.

The sound of the gunshot makes me flinch.

There are five seconds of silence.

“So. Ms. Hollis. Where is the body?”

“That isn’t me.” I manage, my own voice sounding unnatural on the air, like how I imagine a ghost might sound if she didn’t yet know she was dead. “That’s not what happened.”

Mahon and Corina fix me with an exasperated look, and Corina slams the lid of her laptop shut. I watch the two cops deflate with what I hope looks like innocence.

“Ms. Hollis, we’re running out of patience.” Mahon wheezes into his hands. “We have condemning evidence sitting here right in front of us. You are guilty. We have multiple testaments from your boss that you were there at the time of the murder. A handgun was seized from your apartment. The bloodstains analyzed at the scene are fresh. Tell us where you’ve hidden the body and you might get a lighter sentence.”

“I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Just tell us where the body is!” Corina growls through gritted teeth. “It’s not about whether you did it or not! And in any case, there’s no way it wasn’t you!”

“I didn’t do it.”

Mahon sips from his coffee mug, and, choking a little bit on whatever dregs remain, looks at the wall of shame and eyeliner behind him. “Voted most likely to shoot up your school for two years running from ages 14-16.” Mahon says, like he’s listing my achievements. “Only daughter of a single father, rural upbringing—a friendless loner with a strange obsession with… The United Bohemian Kingdoms…” He squints, as if my lifelong obsession was a B-list 2000s toddler’s TV show. “You live where the highest concentration of ex-cons congregate. You cannot hold down a job anywhere but a gas station, despite graduating close to top of your class with a high-profile journalism degree. Do you understand, Ms. Hollis, why the odds may be stacked against you when you tell us for the millionth time, after watching yourself on tape murder another human being, and you say to me and my colleague ‘I didn’t do it?’

“But I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“I really—look, I know I sound crazy but that’s not what happened, y-you…first of-”

“Where. Is. The. Body?” Corina snarls through grit teeth, her long fingernails slipping on the lid of laptop in her hands. “Tell us and we can all go home.”

“You can go home.” I say, still not meeting their eyes. “You both can go home to your families and your partners and your… your whatever else, and nothing will change for you. But if… if you force me into this false confession, nothing will ever be the same for me.”

Mahon and Corina exchange another tepid glance.

\--

The longer you stare at a word, the stranger it looks.

The more you focus on it, the more twisted it appears—the more wrong it seems, the more it feels like you shouldn’t be looking at it at all; like maybe it never should have existed in the first place.

After staring at the words ‘Hang in there’ on the cat poster on my cell wall for four days, I find the same is true, not just for words, but for memories.

When everyone goes ‘Uh huh, is that right?’ enough when you tell them you saw a magical monster and you’re totally not insane and totally not hiding a body, you start doing it to yourself. You start examining your own psyche, looking over your own past like a detective at a crime scene.

And the more you do that, the more you convince yourself it was all a lie.

The warnings were just a new shade of paranoia, you say to yourself. It was just another colour of weird to add to that ever-expanding palette of ‘LONER LOOK’ ™. There were no warnings. There wasn’t a hooded figure. There was no magical vampire—how ridiculous do you think you sound?

Maybe you did kill someone. Would you put it past yourself?

You say that you wouldn’t. You believe it, you really do.

 

You have no idea what’s coming.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I haven't updated in yonks. Hope the wait was worth it, will keep it coming steady.
> 
> Peace x


	8. Chapter Seven: I'm Your Bunkmate, Cupcake.

When I was a little girl teetering on the brink of adolescence, one of the two Dad Approved chores I performed every two days was to take out the trash along our long, gravelly driveway and through the whispering, frostbitten grass to the trashcan. Through winter, summer, autumn and spring, I washed the dishes every night with animalistic dedication in my cut-proof, heat-proof gloves. But barely a day would pass where I didn’t try to make excuses about the trash.

And no, it wasn’t because I was too lazy to help my struggling single father, and no, I wasn’t too weak to carry the bin. No. _No_. You see, I was _petrified_ that in the long, swishing grass we always forgot to cut, that my bare foot would land straight on the belly of an angry snake.

Now I know what you’re thinking: _‘Laura, you lived in… north-north Massachusetts right? Where half the year is steeped in snow? Where most snakes are almost as terrified of people as you are?’_

But it wasn’t the snake. It was never _just_ the snake. 

It was the possibility of the snake.

It was the idea of the snake—unseen, undetected—so acutely aware of me while I was so ignorant to its existence. It was the _thought_ of this smooth-scaled predator so blissfully waiting in the grass, waiting for that choice moment where my foot would come into reach, and it could _finally_ take its prize. 

Of course, every time I stood there, hung on each breathless moment, the snake was never there. Of course the thought occurred to me that maybe it never _was_ there. Maybe it never _would_ be there. But in the back of my little mind, I could never give that idea any leeway.

What _if_?

I tried to explain this phenomenon, this ‘ _what if’_ to Dad, and only received a heartfelt, but slightly condescending _‘Laura, that’s never, ever going to happen, sweetheart’_ in return. But I never gave up on my superstition. I knew that the exact moment I _didn’t_ expect teeth sinking deep into my ankle, they would be there.

And that was how I met _her_ — the snake—the very moment I thought I was safe.

It was 3:18 AM. It was cold, and dark. And ironically, for the million and first time, I was alone. In case anyone forgot, I was also in jail.

And I _had_ been asleep.

Suddenly the corridor lights buzzed into life, and I, like any good idiot, jolted up in my bunk. A guard appeared at the bars. “Mornin’ sunshine.” She growled, tossing her blonde plait over her shoulder. She turned a key in the lock with a satisfyingly crisp _clank._ “Hope you don’t mind no company.”

“Wha-” I mumbled, and then thought better of asking questions. I scrambled into a sitting position.

And before I could do anything else, the guard manhandled someone into view.

“Ow.” She said, glaring at the guard, who was controlling her movement via her long black hair “ _Ow_.” The woman repeated, kicking back at the guard’s ankles. “Fucking hell, _ow_!” the woman yelled—her voice echoing down the corridor.

Looking up and down the hallway, and then up at the security camera on the ceiling, the guard let the woman’s hair go, and she careened backwards through the cell door.

I sat and watching, petrified and clutching my blanket, as my new bunkmate wind-milled her arms wildly, and smacked into the linoleum. She groaned, and flopped an arm, but otherwise, didn’t resist.

The guard snorted, re-locked the door, and strode away.

The lights went out.

“Hi, Cupcake.” The woman said into the dark hollow that had become the space between us.

She offered a hand.

I groped around in the dark for a bit, found her hand and shook, tentatively.

“Carmilla.” The woman said, raising a brow.

Carmilla was perhaps… a little younger than me. There was a scary steadiness to her shining eyes and a fierce twist to her lips. In the faintest light of the buzzing emergency exit sign, I could see her eyes drinking in every part of me, head to toe, like the dark didn’t bother her in the slightest.

“Laura.” I said back.

“Well aren’t you just so… unsullied.” Carmilla-the-creepy-cellmate smirked, rolling up off the floor and into a sitting position. She was still watching me. “Cupcake, I hate to be so brash, but do you like it here?”

Sensing an ulterior motive, I pulled my knees to my chest—defensive position y’know—and let out a tentative. “Um… sure, why?” 

Carmilla rolled her dark eyes and snorted. “You don’t have to lie to me, Creampuff. You’ve been here, what? Three weeks now? Still getting used to eating spaghetti with a spoon, are we?”

“I mean… yeah.” I said, and pulled my knees tighter. Spaghetti is hard to eat with a spoon, granted but… “What do you want?”

“You still having trouble sleeping, hm?” Carmilla asked. “Bad dreams?”

Of course she was right. I was still tossing and turning, wondering if my little flat had an eviction notice stapled to the door yet. And I was getting… weird dreams. A sickly cold feeling started somewhere in my toes.

“Sucks, huh?” Carmilla said, and leaned back against her bunk. “You know, I could help you. Feel like ditching a prison sentence, Cupcake?”

“We’re in… jail?” I said, obviously.

“It was Laura, right?” Carmilla asked, rich voice dripping with condescension.  
“Laura, Sweetcheeks, do you think I’m a dumbass? I know exactly where we are—I got myself right here on purpose, and make no mistake about it, I’m here for _you_.” Her tone suddenly became very cold. “Answer the question.”

Oh God. Oh God, Oh _God_ , not again.

“You’re… you’re not _real_ are you?” I asked Carmilla in a hushed whisper, and pointed an accusing and all-too feeble finger at her. “You’re ju-just another _apparition_ I’ve… I’ve made up in my crazy head to help me forget that I murdered someone!”

“Oh yeah, totally fake. You’re insane, Laura, that’s what’s happening right now. You’re fucked in the head and that’s why I know that you live on Birkenstock Close, and you run a cute little blog about the United Bohemian Kingdoms and you used to work at a gas station, and your first ‘ _apparitions_ ,” Carmilla makes vicious air-quotes, “framed you for the murder of a man that doesn’t exist and now you’re here eating spaghetti with a spoon. Hey, wasn’t your trial scheduled for a month ago, hm?” The sarcasm in her tone was deadly, but my blood ran cold all the same. There was an unreal sureness to her voice. God, I knew that sureness.

 _Hecking Hufflepuffs_ …

“Wh-who do you work for?” I asked, because what else could I ask? “Are you with those hooded…whatevers?!”

The mood in the room went from cold to absolute zero. “What would _you_ know about hooded figures?” Carmilla snapped, suddenly deadly, deadly serious. I didn’t notice at the time, but she had stood without me knowing and she was leaning over me like a bird of prey, a hungry predator.

“N-nothing!” I shook my head. “I know nothing about them!”

Carmilla sneered suspiciously down her nose, and stepped back. “I’ll be leaving in a week. They won’t let you last that long so I suggest you decide quickly.”

Who is _they_? Who is _Carmilla_? Who… _What_?! Oh, I think I’m going to throw up.

It didn’t sound like she wasn’t just guessing based on like… prior jail experience (Which she totally had, I mean seriously). She said that like she was reading off a fact sheet. Like she knew.

“Who are you?” I asked Carmilla the probably-monster cellmate sitting in the darkness. All at once, I felt very, very, very exposed.

“I’m your new cell-mate, Cupcake.” She stood suddenly, and I drew back against the wall. My heartbeat pinged around in my chest so loud I was surprised Carmilla couldn’t hear it. “And you need some sleep, don’t you?”

She smirked, and picked up my copy of Pride and Prejudice from my little bedside shelf. “Night.” She said, and sat down on her own bunk to read. In the dark.  
  
God, I hate the paranormal.

 

\--

 

Every night I dream the same thing.

I am fourteen. I am still knobby-kneed and chubby-cheeked, and I am still my Dad’s little girl. I am small, and wiry and I’m still scared of taking the trash out in the dark (Who isn’t, honestly? That grass was a nightmare…). Every night I wake up in my fourteen-year-old body, panicking that it’s all happening over again, and my dad drives me to school.

“Hey, sweetheart, look— Laura, look! The peaches are in season again!” Dad says, and rubbernecks to look at a roadside fruit stand. It is spring, and the world is green, but I can only see grey. “Isn’t that fantastic?” He says, and smiles at me.

“Dad.” I say firmly, though I’m on the verge of sobbing. “Dad, you need to listen to me. You have to go to a doctor. There’s something you need to know, I know this sounds crazy but you… You need to-”

And then I realise he can’t hear me. He cannot hear a single word. I cannot tell him anything about the cancer—cannot warn him in the slightest about all the insidious little copies of his cells tearing him apart. I am voiceless. I am gagged.

I stare down at my knobby knees, poking out through my jeans. For a minute or two, while the tears start flowing, I play with the zipper on my backpack, and sniffle like I’m just another regular fourteen year old, not mourning her living father.

“The weather has been nice recently.” I say into the silence.

Dad doesn’t respond.

“I… got an F on my English test.” I venture, something I’d never ever do.

Dad just hums to himself and shifts gears, roaring down the highway and into the rocky, potholed road preceding my middle-school. He mumbles a few of the lyrics to a Pearl Jam song on the radio, and pulls into the drop off. “8:19 AM, pumpkin! Out you hop!” He smiles at me, like nothing is wrong.

“Dad.” I say, tapping him on the arm, then grabbing him, then shaking him by the shoulders, “Dad!” I yell, and seize him with both hands, rocking him until I’m red in the face screaming his name. He just smiles. Blank. “Dad! Please, you have to hear me, please! _DAD_! DAD!”

But he never does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I've been gone forever. My most sincere apologies, writing is hard when you've got all them grades to maintain :) Hey, hope you enjoy the update and the updates to come 
> 
> Peace x


	9. Chapter 8: Dick Logic

Posted at 2:22 am, 12/06/2015 by **Administrator/Owner** L_Hollis

 Edited 27 times. Last edited at 1:32 pm, 13/06/2014 by **Administrator/Owner** L_Hollis

 Readers, oh jeez, you’re never going to believe this!

While I was looking through the public photo records of some awesome satellites (Listed at the end of the post), I _may_ or _may not_ have stumbled across satellite imagery from a northern province of Bohemia and stars above! If you zoom in juuuust a little bit on this settlement, which is believed to be a small city called Karlstejn, you can see the tippy-top of the tallest and most extravagant building in the whole country!

(Image: karlstejn_castle.jpg not found)

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This, my dear friends, is where the royalty of Bohemia traditionally lived. Before Queen Lilita the First began her work on the wall, dignitaries from foreign countries would congregate here, and we’re under the assumption, based on the movements from the people who live here (Believed to be multitudes of servants, handmaidens and guards!), that there are still very important people living here, perhaps even the most recent Queen (Queen Lilita XI, who ascended to the throne in 1999. She succeeded her mother, Queen Lilita X, who died in late 1998).

Actually, since the first Queen Lilita, a pattern has begun— each successive queen names her firstborn after herself. Strange, isn’t it! How fascinating! And… really statistically improbable that each of these queens had a daughter as their firstborn! Bohemia is such an enigmatic place…

But in any case, Karlstejn is a place to behold! It’s position on a hilltop in between two sloping valleys, and the gigantic, thick stone walls makes it utterly impregnable, aaand, fascinating fact, there is no ground floor entrance to all but one tower, and the bridges between the castle’s towers are all made of wood! Why? Well, if the first tower was sieged, and everything was going awful, you could always retreat to the next tower, burn the wooden bridge, and leave your enemies stranded with no way into the next tower! We know this because this castle was built in 1348, and records still travelled out of the country then.

Truly a sight I wish to one day behold…

Tune in next time for my last monster post for the semester, the terrifying Bubak!

 —

Posted at 2:22 am, 21/06/2015 by **Administrator/Owner** L_Hollis

Edited 14 times. Last edited at 4:14 am, 22/06/2015 by **Administrator/Owner** L_Hollis

Hey readers,

Um… I’m going to be away for a while. For my health, you might say. Something just happened in my family, something really, really bad and I need… space. Lots of it.

My dad just died. And I wasn’t there to be with him. I’m postponing everything, at least until after the funeral. After I pay off all this medical debt… along with this college debt, and… the regular debt, maybe I’ll be back. Maybe…

\--

Jail is just like high school.

You’re trapped with hundreds of angry, lonely, sweaty people inside an underfunded, grey box, everyone hates you, and you’re all victims of an oppressive, profit driven system that abuses your dignity for a few bucks.

That, and they give you really awful food.

I woke up that morning to the clattering of the morning wake-up bell, and the thunderous clicking of all the cell doors opening. And Carmilla, my new bestie? She was leaning over my face. 

“AUGHR.” I yelled, and scrambled back but Carmilla didn’t so much as flinch. My back slammed into the brick cell wall “WHAT THE FIDDLESTICKS?!”

“Hey.” Carmilla said, pushing Pride and Prejudice into my orange prison-shirted chest. “I didn’t expect you to fall asleep.”

“I wasn’t planning on it!” I squeaked, fear forcing my voice an octave higher. I swiped the book out of her waiting hands and held it like a shield. “H-how long have you been watching me?!”

Carmilla smirked, and peeked her head out into the corridor as a couple hundred of our fellow inmates shuffled past groggily. “Oh, Cupcake,” She purrs, spinning back into our cell and sitting down on her bunk. “I _am_ here for you, don’t doubt it, but I wouldn’t stoop to _that_. You’re cute—that’s it. Don’t go flattering yourself.”

“Creep.” I hiss under my breath, letting Pride and Prejudice slide out of my clammy hands onto my fragile bedside shelf. 

“Whatever. Let’s grab some breakfast, huh, Creampuff? 

I found myself standing—the linoleum cold even with socks on—and shuffling into my sandals (They don’t give us any shoes we could kill each other with, so yes, as a matter of fact, I am rocking socks and sandals in jail). I found myself following Carmilla out of our cell and into the corridor, and watching her confident, loping gait all the way to the cafeteria. Her shoeless feet were soundless on the floor. I found myself stopping at the cafeteria door, that nostalgic anxiety burying me until I’m sixteen again, looking over a whole room of people who all voted me most likely to shoot up a school for two years running. Carmilla turned midway through the room as if sensing my distance and gave me yet another smug look, like she knew exactly what I was thinking (And, let’s be honest, she probably did—that supernatural… person). So I kick-started into motion again, despite myself, because how was I to know what she’d do to me if I didn’t comply?

In the back of my head, I thought of Matska Bellmonde, daughter of the Queen of Bohemia, and that unreal viciousness to her. I thought of the hooded figures, and their jerking, pitching, rolling walk, their corpse hands and their owl-eyes. I decided, as I watched the monster wearing pretty-girl skin, that I hadn’t seen anything like Carmilla in my life.

So I walked, shuffling in my socks and sandals, and Carmilla and I waited in the line, and I received my lumpy prison food, and we sat down together at the very end of a long, long lacquer bench. 

“How’s the food?” Carmilla asked, twiddling her two index fingers together. She had nothing in front of her. I was half convinced she joined me in the line purely to intimidate me.

Looking down at my somber affair of milkless cornflakes, cold tinned spaghetti from the night before, and cup of stale water, (Who knew water could be stale, huh?) and the spoon with which I was to eat everything with, I sniffed with a little disgust. “I’m not really sure how nobody’s died of malnutrition yet.” I said honestly.

There was awkward silence for a good, long minute.

“Hey.” Carmilla said, suddenly leaning forwards. “Cupcake, you’ve probably guessed by now that I’m the impatient type, so I want to hear it from you straight.”

I resisted the childish urge to say something like: ‘I don’t think you’re gonna get anything straight from me,’ but instead I spooned some spaghetti into my mouth and said “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I want an answer.” Carmilla said, and now she was close, so close—and gosh, I was getting real tired of not seeing things with my own two eyes. Still, my heart rate spiked, and I swallowed cold tinned spaghetti very fast. We were so close I could feel the heat of her breath on my “You know you only have a week, and they won’t let you last that long.”

Shrugging as non-comittally as one can shrug within strangling-distance of a monster, I spooned another mouthful of spaghetti and tried to seem as non-confrontational as the only gay at the annual Thanksgiving dinner. “I don’t know.” I said airily. “I guess I just… don’t know you very well?”

“You don’t have to know me, you just have to trust me.”

“I… don’t trust you _or_ know you.”

Carmilla scoffed. “As if that should make a difference. What choice do you have?”

“Well, Carmilla,” I said, putting down my spaghetti spoon, keeping my tone as measured as possible, “I could comfortably live my thirty years, or I could trust you with this grand escape plan, and I could make it my life.”

“Or you could be free.” Carmilla said, equally as measured, falling back into her seat.

I let out a long, long sigh. “What does free even mean for me, by your definition? Do you mean I go back to my life before jail? Working minimum wage and living on Birkenstock Close? Or do you mean free as in we’re on the run for the rest of our lives? Because both of those are terrible kinds of freedom. What kind of freedom do you want for me?”

Carmilla sneered—a terrible condescending sneer. “When Matska told me you were shallow I underestimated just how guileless you actually were. I see now—I see what you’re doing here, Creampuff. You see a golden opportunity in front of you and you’re still gonna spit on it to see if it’ll tarnish. What choice do you have? You think you have thirty years to waste here?! Don’t you know what’s coming for you?”

“I… don’t, actually.” I said, which I thought was a rather sensible analysis (Who’s shallow now! Ha!). And then I put the pieces together “Wait, wait, _wait_ … You know Bellmonde?!”

“Of course I know her.” Carmilla said, crossing her arms over her chest. “She’s my sister.”

In my little head, I compared an image of the towering figure of Matska Bellmonde—the sweeping robes, the ethereal (if creepy) smile, the _fangs_ , and the dark bronze skin. Carmilla on the other hand, was _far_ shorter, dressed in prison-block orange and was probably too pale for ‘ivory’ coloured foundation. I hadn’t seen her teeth enough to judge the vampire part.

Granted they were both gorgeous—but that might have been the only uniting feature. I mean… Forget that last part.

“You… and Bellmonde… are… sisters.” I stated, dragging out _sisters_ like one might grab an earthworm and pull it out of their throat.

“Not by birth, Creampuff, but sisters nonetheless. Mother brought us together.”

“Mother as in… Queen of Bohemia Mother?”

“Congratulations, Cupcake, you’re _so_ astute.”

“So that’s your ulterior motive?” I said, leaning back and folding my arms. “You want me for the Queen. Who wants me for… what?”

“Whatever she told you on that phone call.” Carmilla said, waving a hand around and then rubbing her temples, like just talking to me was giving her a headache. “I don’t get told the details, I just deliver the people Mother wants and that’s the end of it.”

“No offense, _Princess_ ,” I said, abandoning a measured tone completely (I mean, can you blame me?! Princess of Bohemia she may be but she’s definitely Queen of Being a Dick). “But hearing all this doesn’t exactly make me trust you any more. The last interaction I had with your family landed me in jail, so forgive me if I’m a little hesitant. What proof do I have that you even know Bellmonde? You could be another player in this frickin’ game for all I know, Carmilla—if that even is your name." 

Carmilla stood, and leaned right back over the table. I swallowed my brief confidence right back down and prepared to eat my words. I looked left and right, but nobody seemed to be watching—nobody seemed to care at all. Carmilla beckoned me to stand as well, and I leaned right over until she put a hand (gently?) onto my shoulder. Then she tightened her grip like a vice. “I hope you know, Laura Hollis, that I have had a lot of patience with you.” She hissed into my ear, and as much as I willed my body to move, I couldn’t—I just couldn’t. “You’ve brought me all the way to fucking _America_ to pick up your derelict ass out of a thirty year prison sentence and you can’t even find it within yourself to be grateful.” She let out a long, slow breath—it tickled my ear. “My name is Carmilla Karnstein. I am the only birth daughter of the Queen of Bohemia and a month ago, you would have given your left ass-cheek to go where that golden envelope could take you. What makes this so different?”

I took an equally long, slow breath. “I’m sorry, I just… A bunch of hooded monsters tried to frame me for murder. What makes _you_ so different?”

Carmilla released me, and looked at me with the utmost contempt. “Fine. Give me something to do. Something that’ll convince you. Let me be your fucking Heracles—what impossible task are you going to serve?”

I thought for a long, long moment.

Around us, the buzz of chatter began to die away as prisoners filtered out of the cafeteria, heading for the yard or for their cells. As I thought, the last of them filtered out and away through the doors. The cafeteria workers (prisoners too) had closed their roller shutters, even though my tray was still sitting here on the lacquer table. We were alone.

I thought some more.

“You’re supposed to be all supernaturally dangerous, right?”

“Right.” Carmilla said, grinding her teeth.

“If you’re all that, then you’ll have no problem beating up the toughest chick in the yard, right?”

Carmilla paused, and for a second I thought I’d finally won one over her-- finally I'd stumped her! Instead, she sighed, louder and more beleaguered than ever. “You know, Cupcake, I tried to do this the easy way.”

And she drew back her fist and decked me in the head.

It was the eternal justice of dick logic: he who deliberately makes things hard is probably gonna get fucked

 

\--.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. 
> 
> So on a recent visit to the Czech Republic, I was hit with a wave of inspiration, and barely two weeks later, here I am, writing and exhaustive, novel-length work, possibly with sequels. Thanks y'all for your support and appreciation x
> 
> Peace x


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